Would You Want Your Vaccine Produced by Supporters of Jihad?

"Selling the crucial
manufacture of vaccines to an ideologically hostile country, which might
- for whatever reason – suddenly decide to shut down production, does
not sound like a good idea... Those who say that the Saudis are merely
interested in profit, just like everybody else, should know better". —
Rachel Ehrenfeld, expert on financing terrorism

Virtually all political parties supported the Danish government's
sale of its vaccine manufacturing facility to the Saudi conglomerate.

After the publication of the Danish Mohammad cartoons in 2006,
Saudis boycotted Danish goods. Do Danish politicians really have such
short memories?

Vaccines are not an easy commodity to come by. It takes minimum
six months for an order of vaccines to be delivered, but, according to
the World Health Organization, delivery can also easily take up to two
years.

How much trust are Danish consumers supposed to have in a Saudi
owned conglomerate, which employs jihadists such as Usmani and donates
heavily to jihadist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, who
want to bring about a caliphate? The potential for political
exploitation is too evident to reject.

Would you want your vaccines produced by a Saudi company that supports jihad? Danes, it seems, may have no choice.Denmark recently sold its state-owned vaccine manufacturing facility to a conglomerate owned by the Aljomaih Group, a Saudi family dynasty[1] led by Sheikh AbdulAziz Hamad Aljomaih. The sheikh is also the largest single stockholder and chairman of Arcapita Bank, (formerly First Islamic Investment Bank) headquartered in Bahrain. As an Islamic bank, it has a so-called Sharia Supervisory Board comprised of Islamic scholars, who ensure that the bank's activities comply with sharia (Islamic law).Former Islamic judge and leading Islamic scholar Taqi Usmani, who
sits on the bank's Sharia Board, in his book, "Islam and Modernism", writes ruminations such as: "Aggressive Jihad is lawful even today... Its justification cannot be veiled..."Usami had also, after Danish newspapers reprinted the Mohammad cartoons in 2008, co-signed an appeal to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), urging it to boycott Denmark:

"If the Danish government does not declare the
[publication of] shameful and blasphemous cartoons as a criminal act,
the OIC [should] appeal to all Islamic nations for a trade boycott of
that bigoted country".

Equally noteworthy is that the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yussuf al-Qaradawi, used to sit on Arcapita's sharia board, until he eventually resigned. Qaradawi, already in 1995, told
a Muslim Arab Youth Association convention in Toledo, Ohio, "We will
conquer Europe, we will conquer America!" According to Qaradawi, sharia
law should be introduced gradually,
over a five-year period in a new country. Presumably, this
gradually-introduced sharia legal system would include the end of free
speech under "blasphemy laws", the denigration and oppression of women,
such as women worth half as much as men in court, polygamy, the
persecution of Jews (Qaradawi advocates killing all of them), beating wives as a way of "disciplining" them and so on. Only after this transition phase, sharia laws such as killing apostates and homosexuals, as well as chopping off hands for theft, would be introduced.Given Qaradawi's former prominence in Arcapita, it hardly comes as a surprise that the bank has given financial support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Bahrain, known there as the Al Islah Society. According to a leaked report by former US Ambassador to Bahrain, Ambassador William T. Monroe:

"Arcapita reported giving a total $591,000 in 2003 and
$583,000 in 2002 to a variety of charitable organizations... the Islamic
Education Society (Al Tarbiya Al Islamiya - Sunni Salafi) and the Al
Islah Society (Sunni Muslim Brotherhood) are the largest beneficiaries
of Arcapita's charitable giving... We are aware of concerns linking
Arcapita advisors and staff to questionable organizations."

In August 2016, the Danish government announced
that it "...rejects any organization representing antidemocratic and
radicalized environments" and considers the Muslim Brotherhood to be
"deeply problematic" and something they "strongly reject".Clearly not strongly enough."Selling the crucial manufacture of vaccines to an ideologically
hostile country, which might -- for whatever reason -- suddenly decide
to shut down production, does not sound like a good idea. Those who say
that the Saudis are merely interested in profit, just like everybody
else, should know better", Rachel Ehrenfeld, an expert on the financing
of terrorism, toldEkstra Bladet.

Virtually all
political parties supported the Danish government's sale of its vaccine
manufacturing facility to the Saudi conglomerate. This is strange,
given the recent history of Danish-Saudi relations.After the publication of the Danish Mohammad cartoons in 2006, Saudis
boycotted Danish goods. Saudi Arabia's religious leader, Grand Mufti
Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheik, demanded that the Danish government hold Jyllands-Posten,
the newspaper that printed the Mohammad cartoons, to account and force
the newspaper to give an apology: "The government should give [the
newspaper] a fine as a deterrence. This is the least that Muslims should
demand", he said.Do Danish politicians really have such short memories?Vaccines are not an easy commodity to come by. It takes minimum of six months for an order of vaccines to be delivered, but, according
to the World Health Organization, delivery can also easily take up to
two years. Astonishingly, the Danish state has given the Aljomaih group
an incredible start by promising
to buy all its children's vaccines from the sheikh for the first 30
months. Only after that will Danish authorities be able to buy their
children's vaccines elsewhere. The Danish government has also promised the Aljomaih group not to create new Danish state vaccine production for the first three years.Should consumers not be able to trust a producer of something as
critical as vaccines? How much trust are Danish consumers supposed to
have in a Saudi owned conglomerate, which employs jihadists such as
Usmani, which donates heavily to jihadist organizations such as the
Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn wants to bring about a caliphate? The
potential for political exploitation is too evident to reject. Ekstra Bladet ran a poll on its website asking whether Danes were in favor or against the sale: 95% were against it.Even more remarkable is that the government claims
not to have known about the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood
and Aljomaih; all the information is easily accessible on the internet.Health Minister Ellen Trane Nørby has defended
the sale: "We did not have several buyers to choose from. We have the
buyer we have and it has saved 600 Danish jobs, which would otherwise
have been lost".Is she saying that the safety of Danish citizens is worth 600 jobs?The sale of the Danish vaccine production facility to the Saudi
conglomerate captures perfectly everything that is wrong with European
politicians today: their apparent gullibility, their carelessness and
their desire to sell out to places such as Saudi Arabia, seemingly
without giving much thought to the long-term consequences.

Judith Bergman is a writer, columnist, lawyer and political analyst.

[1]
The Group has been active in healthcare through its investment arm AJ
Pharma Holding, and it is its Malaysian subsidiary, AJ Biologics, which
will take over the vaccine production in the Danish facility in
Copenhagen with its 100-year-old history and approximately 500 Danish
employees. The deal was a steal for the Aljomaih group, which acquired
the vaccine production company for what is believed to be a tenth of its
actual value, a mere 15 million DKK.